The Grinch is alive and well in Washington, D.C., stealing your tax money for the most ludicrous things.

Sen. Tom Coburn, a medical doctor from Oklahoma, has published his annual “Wastebook,” revealing 100 examples of wasteful spending of taxpayer’s money by the federal government.

The total comes to nearly $30 billion, which the senator claims is only a fraction of the hundreds of billions of wasteful government spending each year.

The list is enough to kill your Christmas spirit whether you are a Republican, like Coburn, or a Democrat.

A few examples:

Looking for romance

The National Endowment of the Humanities — that’s right, you the American taxpayer, anted up for this unnecessary government agency — forked over nearly $1 million to “explore the fascinating, often contradictory origins and influences of popular romance as told in novels, films, comics, advice books, songs, and internet fan fiction, taking a global perspective — while looking back across time as far as the ancient Greeks.”

We’re sure you will rest easier tonight knowing you paid for that!

Stay calm and carry on

A total of $325,525 went for a government study about angry wives. The study determined that “wives would find marriage more satisfying if they could calm down faster during arguments with their husbands.”

A company right here in North Carolina received $150,000 from the feds — that’s your tax money they hand out — to develop a math learning game based on the zombie apocalypse.

The zombie apocalypse? Really?

Pork from what North Carolina member of Congress?

Not science fiction

Unfortunately, this one is all too real. NASA, out of the space flight business, has enough money — $390,000 — to pay for a YouTube show and cartoon series called “Green Ninja.” The plot? A man wearing a Green Ninja costume teaches kids about global warming. This as news breaks about the massive fraud of former Environmental Protection Agency climate expert John Beale, who bilked the EPA out of a million in taxpayer money

But wait!

There’s more. Much more.

■ Like the military’s decision to destroy $7 billion worth of equipment rather than ship it back from the Middle East.

■ And the $3.5 million spent on solar panels at a New Hampshire airport, now covered because they caused a glare so harsh air traffic controllers had difficulty seeing the runways.

Folks, you simply can’t make this kind of stuff up.

Members of Congress from both parties need to act responsibly by cleaning up such outrageous spending. Americans have had to do some serious belt-tightening. Our government should, too.